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Abstract
Corn residues (cobs, leaves and stalks) are abundantly available renewable materials that can be used as an energy source in gasification and combustion systems. Proper understanding of the physical properties of these materials is necessary for their use in thermochemical conversion processes. The physical properties (moisture content, particle size, bulk density and porosity) of corn cobs, leaves and stalks were determined in this study. The moisture contents were 6.38, 7.92 and 6.40% of the cobs, leaves and stalks, respectively. The cobs had the highest weight percentage (18.23%) of the small particles (0.850 mm). Most of the stalk particles (84.82%) were in the range of 0.212-0.850 mm. The cob particle size had a normal concave (inward) distribution between particle sizes 0.106 mm (18.23 weight %) and 0.925 mm (25.26 weight %) with the lowest weight percentage (5.30 weight %) at 0.390 mm particle size while the stalk particle size had a normal convex (outward) distribution between particle sizes 0.106 mm (8.49 weight %) and 0.925 mm (6.69 weight %) with the highest weight percentage (23.47 weight %) at the 0.605 mm particle size. The leaves had an increasing trend of particle size distribution between the particle sizes 0.106 and 0.925 mm. The average particle sizes for the cobs, leaves and stalks were 0.56, 0.70 and 0.49 mm, respectively. The average bulk density was 282.38, 81.61 and 127.32 kg m-3 for the corn cobs, leaves and stalks, respectively. The average porosity was 67.93, 86.06 and 58.51% for the corn cobs, leaves and stalks, respectively. A positive relationship between the average particle size and the porosity was observed for the corn residues. The differences in the physical properties among the corn residues (cobs, leaves and stalks) observed in this study are due to variations in the compositions and structures of these materials.
Highlights
Corn is an important food for many people in Africa, Asia and Latin America and is used in animal feeding in North America and some parts of the world
The moisture contents of corn cobs and stalks are in the range of 5.3-7.2% reported by Ileleji and Zhou (2008) for the corn stover from USA
The moisture contents reported in this study (6.38-7.92%) are lower than the value of 9% reported by Bitra et al (2009) for the corn stover from USA, the value of 11.3% reported by Igathinathane et al (2009) for the corn stalk from the USA and the value of 11.4% reported by Luo et al (2011) for the corn stalk from China
Summary
Corn (maize) is an important food for many people in Africa, Asia and Latin America and is used in animal feeding in North America and some parts of the world. Corn is used as human food in the form of tortillas, porridge, popcorn and barbecues and as forage and silage for animals. It is a good source of industrial products such as starch (Zhang et al, 2012), vitamin (Warman and Havard, 1998), fiber (Pandya and Srinivasan, 2012), oil (Comin et al, 2012) and ethanol (Lamsal et al, 2011). The global corn production increased from 599.35-867.52 million tonnes (44.74% increase) during the period of 2001-2011 as shown in Fig. 1 (USDA, 2011), which is much higher than the increase in the world population of 12.34% (6.16-6.92 billion) during the same period. The per capita corn consumption, corn imports and exports of the top 10 counties in each category are presented in Fig. 2-4, respectively
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